**Source:** PSS vol. 41

The split of communists in Germany has become a fact. The "Lefts" or "principled opposition" have formed a separate "Communist Workers' Party" in distinction from the "Communist Party." In Italy, matters likewise appear to be heading toward a split—I say appear, because I have only supplementary issues (Nos. 7 and 8) of the left newspaper *Soviet* (*Il Soviet*), where the possibility and necessity of a split are discussed openly, and moreover the discussion concerns also a congress of the "abstentionists" faction (or boycottists, i.e., opponents of parliamentary participation), which faction has up to now been included in the Italian Socialist Party.

One may fear that the split with the "Lefts," the anti-parliamentarians (partly also anti-politicians, opponents of the political party and of work in the trade unions), will become an international phenomenon, similar to the split with the "centrists" (or Kautskyists, Longuetists, "independents," etc.). Let it be so. A split is nonetheless preferable to confusion, which impedes both the ideological, theoretical, revolutionary growth and the maturation of the party and its harmonious, genuinely organized, genuinely preparatory work for the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Let the "Lefts" test themselves in action, on the national and international scale; let them attempt to prepare (and then carry out) the dictatorship of the proletariat without a strictly centralized party possessing iron discipline, without the ability to master all spheres, branches, and varieties of political and cultural work. Practical experience will teach them quickly. One need only exert every effort so that the split with the "Lefts" does not hinder, or hinders as little as possible, the inevitable and necessary merger in the near future of all participants in the workers' movement who stand sincerely and conscientiousy for Soviet power and for the dictatorship of the proletariat into a single party. In Russia it was a particular advantage to the Bolsheviks that they had 15 years for systematic and thoroughgoing struggle both against the Mensheviks (i.e., opportunists and "centrists") and against the "Lefts" long before the direct mass struggle for the dictatorship of the proletariat. In Europe and America this same work must now be carried out by "forced marches." Individual persons, especially from among unsuccessful pretenders to leadership, may (if they lack proletarian discipline and "honesty with themselves") stubbornly persist in their errors for a long time, but the working masses will easily and swiftly, when the moment ripens, unite themselves and unite all sincere communists in a single party capable of realizing the Soviet system and the dictatorship of the proletariat[14].